


Those We Leave Behind

by lucymonster



Series: People Change (Memories Don't) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6710011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I can’t force you to do this if you don’t want to,” says Steve.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You can, though,” said Bucky. “Anyone can. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?”</i>
</p><p>Bucky’s choice was an extreme one, made in extreme circumstances. Steve wonders, now, if they should have thought it out a little longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those We Leave Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This is me pigheadedly refusing to accept that there wasn't another way out at the mid-credits scene. Major Civil War spoilers, and a small added warning for discussion of suicide. 
> 
> Thanks to ladylapislazuli for the beta!

“You’re quiet,” says Sam, as the chopper carries them up over the vast green stretches of the Wakandan jungle.

Steve gazes out the window. The chopper has re-angled itself to avoid the side of a mountain; he’s safe, now, from the urge to look back. “Do you think we made the right decision?” he asks.

“ _ We _ didn’t make any decision,” says Sam. “That back there was a one-man talent show.” He claps Steve on the shoulder, and Steve tears his eyes away from the window. “For what it’s worth, though, I think what Bucky did was pretty brave. Look, Steve, I know you’d have gone to the ends of the earth to help him if he asked you to, but it would have been hell on all of us. Him included. He made the right call.”

“Maybe,” says Steve. It had seemed so logical in the lab, surrounded by doctors and Bucky’s unflinching determination.

“Besides,” says Sam, “this isn’t the end. You’ll come back for him someday.”

-

After the storm, the daily routine of everyday life feels treacle-slow. Steve doesn’t hear from Tony; he doesn’t hear from Sharon; he doesn’t hear from Natasha. Clint and his family go off the grid, and Wanda goes with them. Scott goes back to wherever the hell Clint found him – the authorities don’t seem quite sure who he is, or where he’s from, or what he has to do with the registration fiasco. 

With nothing left to tie them down, Steve and Sam hit the road. Maybe they’d be less recognisable if they went separate ways, but it doesn’t come up again after Steve’s first, failed attempt to discuss their plans. “We could walk the Grand Canyon,” Sam says, right over the top of Steve’s apology for dragging him into all this trouble. “I’ve always wanted to do that. Or head overseas. Hit up Tahiti, maybe, what do you say?”

Steve’s heart isn’t in Tahiti, or the Grand Canyon walk, or the dusty road trips in between. In shitty motel rooms and tropical resorts he watches the TV each night, scouring the channels for more news of the fallout from the Accords. Public debate is fierce. There are pockets of staunch opposition in the US South who think the regulations are a breach of civil liberties. Russia and China don’t trust the UN to manage the oversight fairly. Bucky’s face is splashed all over the coverage: the JCTC taskforce found more records of the Winter Soldier’s missions at the Siberian facility. Old security case files are being opened. Officials are being sanctioned, leaders being stood down over their failure to bring him in. Public warnings. Rumoured sightings. Wild speculation about his current whereabouts.

Each glimpse of Bucky’s name sets off a whirlwind of feeling in Steve’s chest. Warmth, respect, loneliness, regret, aching uncertainty. Bucky looked so peaceful as the glass of his cryo tank frosted over. Peaceful in a way Steve never thought he might never see again, when he first came face to face with Bucky in a dirty Romanian apartment filled with the scent of stale sweat and peeling paint.

There are so many things Steve could have said before Bucky went under. That he was proud of what Bucky had done, of how hard he’d fought. That he wanted Bucky to stay. That he was glad, deep down, not to have to worry anymore about Bucky’s lethal alter ego. That Bucky’s choice proved how much good there was in him, how little he deserved the paralysing guilt that weighed on his conscience. That Steve still loved him. That Steve would miss him.

He didn’t say any of it, and Bucky didn’t say anything at all; and Bucky went to sleep with a look of relief on his face.

Life goes on. A bombing in Bali takes the spotlight off the Sokovia Accords; stories of war and conflict and failed diplomacy edge their way back into the news cycle. Sam talks about setting up a new Avengers Ranch, out in the Midwest, somewhere remote and peaceful where local sympathies for their cause run high. Wanda joins them on a trip to Spain, where Steve hides his face beneath a wide-brimmed hat and Sam grows a truly spectacular moustache and the three of them stop a rogue Hydra death squad from blowing up an old cathedral. Instability gives way to routine. The world keeps spinning.

And then one day, barely four months after the quiet goodbye in Wakanda, the phone rings.

-

The jungle air is dense and steamy when Steve steps off the chopper and out onto the landing zone where T’Challa is waiting to greet them. Something about him has changed since his coronation: his eyes are older, and he carries himself with a kingly grace that melts into an easy smile as Steve and Sam approach.

“Welcome, my friends,” he says. “I hope your flight has not left you too tired. We have a lot to talk about.”

Solemn aides serve out fragrant mint tea in room off the eastern entrance of the compound. The air inside is crisply cold, and the sweat on Steve’s brow chills him as it evaporates. The humidity from outside has seeped beneath his clothes.

T’Challa introduces Dr Mboye, a towering woman with flecks of peppery grey in her dark hair. She has brought notes, pages and pages of her theories written out longhand in English and Wakandan, along with a book that Steve recognises with an unpleasant jolt in his stomach. The red leather journal sits atop her stack of papers, old and battered and embossed with a familiar black star, drawing Steve’s eye inexorably as Dr Mboye presents the outline of her work.

T’Challa follows Steve’s gaze and smiles ruefully. “It is not pleasant reading,” he says, “but Hydra’s book has taught us a great deal about the methods they used to control your friend. His condition is complex, Captain. Before he went under he talked of removing Hydra’s teachings from his head, as one would cut away a tumour from healthy tissue. I fear it will not be so simple.”

“But you think you’ve found a way to help him,” says Steve.

Dr Mboye clears her throat. “Hydra’s book describes a near-constant process of reconditioning when the Winter Soldier was active. Their uses for him changed with the turning of the political wheel. The communist Russians who oversaw his indoctrination applied Marxist-Leninist principles to Hydra’s ultimate goal of world domination. The Winter Soldier was taught at that time to kill for the glory of communism and the promise of a utopian future under Stalin’s leadership.”

“Hold up,” says Sam. Skepticism is etched into his face. “You’re telling me the Winter Soldier is a Bolshevik revolutionary?”

“He has been many things over the years,” says Dr Mboye. “His Hydra masters taught him obedience and a readiness to kill, but they also strove to impart him with a deeper commitment to their own values. After the fall of the USSR, he was reprogrammed extensively to bring his beliefs in line with the capitalist American branch of Hydra. His handler General Karpov was especially attendant to the Winter Soldier’s moral education. He has left behind meticulous records of the propaganda the Winter Soldier was exposed to and the means by which they made him receptive to it.”

“Okay,” says Sam. “Sounds fascinating. So what does that have to do with us?”

“To cure your friend we must understand his condition. And to understand his condition, we must understand its origins,” says Dr Mboye loftily.

Steve furrows his brow. His run-ins with Bucky in brainwashed Hydra weapon mode have been mercifully brief, but he never got the impression that the Winter Soldier was especially concerned about the ethical underpinnings of a global capitalist economy.

“A soldier,” says Dr Mboye, “does what he does because he believes that it is right. That is true of our enlisted men and women, and it is true of the Winter Soldier. His faith in Hydra is strong, but it is also synthetic and malleable. He has adapted to many regime changes, both within Hydra and in the world at large. What I propose is that we will introduce a new regime change into his conditioning. Break down the malicious beliefs he has been taught and create better, more prosocial ones. We undertake such reforms often with offenders who have been radicalised by terrorist organisations. We have not attempted it before with a victim of such comprehensive brainwashing. My team will be pioneering new methods of deradicalisation and counter-brainwashing to neutralise your friend’s violent programming.”

“So.” Steve chews this over slowly. “What you’re saying is –” 

“–that you’re going to try and reform the Winter Soldier,” says Sam. “Oh my god, of course that’s the goddamn plan. I knew I shouldn’t have come to this meeting. Holy shit.”

“It may be,” Dr Mboye goes on, as if she didn’t hear, “that repeat exposure to the triggering stimulus in controlled lab conditions will help strengthen the resistance our patient has already shown. He has demonstrated a certain aptitude for shaking off the brainwashing and reasserting control over his implanted behaviours, as you have seen, Captain. But we cannot guarantee that he will ever be able to overcome it altogether. Therefore our immediate focus must be on damage reduction.”

Sam is shaking his head. “He’s not doing much damage while he’s on ice,” he says. “Do I need to remind anyone in this room what happened last time Bucky went crazy? Because he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s going to be receptive to your therapy sessions.”

“Sam has a point,” says Steve reluctantly. He’d imagined a cleaner form of therapy, a reversal of some sort to the damage Hydra inflicted on Bucky’s brain. The thought of having to meet the Winter Soldier again, even under controlled conditions, makes him feel a little sick. “I thought you were working on a way to undo what they did to him. To remove the trigger phrases, so he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life fighting himself.” 

He imagines waking Bucky up, and having to explain to him that treatment will involve deliberately and repeatedly sending him out of his mind. He remembers the look of bleak horror on Bucky’s face when he came around from his last episode. His abject misery when he realised what he’d done.  _ I knew this would happen _ .

T’Challa inclines his head. “Perhaps one day we will have the skill to do as you ask. But your friend’s triggers are implanted deeply in his mind, beyond the reach of our most skilled surgeons and psychiatrists. We believe that our best hope for his recovery lies not in destroying Hydra’s programming by force, but in gentle modification and stabilisation of the compulsions they put there.”

Steve swallows. It all sounds nightmarishly risky to him. “There’s so much that could go wrong here. Why are you doing this for him?”

“Because I honour my promises,” says T’Challa evenly. “I promised I would help your friend find peace, but for as long as he chooses to hide from his demons in artificial slumber, he will not know true peace.”

T’Challa’s gaze flits away as he speaks. For T’Challa, this isn’t about Bucky - not really. Steve can see it in his eyes. Grief, regret, remembrance, all barely concealed behind a finely-honed mask of diplomatic composure. But the smile he gives Steve when he looks back up is warm and sincere.

Steve remembers the grim look on Bucky’s face when he told Steve his plan, the clenched jaw, the exhaustion in his eyes.  _ As long as this stuff’s inside my head, I can’t be trusted. I’m a danger to everyone around me. And I can’t live with that, Steve.  _ “I don’t think Bucky’s going to like it,” he says.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to like it,” Sam mutters.

“I believe in the prowess of my scientists,” says T’Challa. “And I believe that there is hope in their proposed method. But the choice is not mine to make.”

“No,” says Steve. He tries to search out his own gut feeling; all he finds is a tangle of conflicting thoughts and buzzing static. “The choice is Bucky’s."

Sam buries his face in his hands.

-

They won’t let Steve into the lab while Bucky is being revived. He waits in a well-lit sitting room down the hall, and grips the arms of his chair to keep himself from getting up and pacing. 

Not a day has gone by in the past four months when Steve hasn’t wondered if he did the right thing letting Bucky go back under. It wasn’t his call in the end, he knows that; but there are arguments he didn’t make, other options he could have put on the table.  _ You don’t have to disappear to save trouble for the rest of us. I’ll fight for you as long as it takes. I’m not afraid of you. _ He wonders, in retrospect, if Bucky really planned on waking back up – if he ever expected them to make good on their promise of finding a solution.

Did Bucky go under because he thought it was right, or did he go under because he was scared? It was an extreme choice, made in extreme circumstances; Steve wonders, now, if they should have thought it out a little longer.

“I gotta say it,” says Sam. He’s standing by the window, arms folded, gazing out at the jungle with a watchful eye. Sam has been worried about their chopper getting followed to the base. He’s been worried about everything to do with this operation, which Steve’s pretty sure is why he insisted on coming back with him. “I think this is a really, really bad idea. You ever heard the phrase ‘let sleeping dogs lie’?”

“Bucky’s not a dog, Sam.”

“He’s dangerous. I know it, you know it, he knows it. That’s why he went under. And bringing him back now, with the whole world still out looking for him – it’s crazy, Steve.” Sam turns around, looks Steve dead in the eye. “If we just waited a while for things to simmer down –”

Steve gives up and gets to his feet, pacing the room in long strides. “If T’Challa’s people have found a solution, Bucky deserves to know about it. We can’t ask him to put his life on hold until it’s convenient for us to help him.”

“We don’t have to ask him anything,” says Sam. “Dude’s out like a light. Last time I checked, that’s exactly how he wanted it. How do you think he’s going to feel when he wakes up to the exact same shitstorm he froze himself to get away from?”

“I get that you don’t like him, Sam –”

“Course I don’t like him,” says Sam impatiently. “Every time the guy shows up, I go home with compound fractures. But that’s not what this is about. Bucky knew what he was signing up for and he did it anyway. Because he wanted to. Because he knew it was right. How long are you going to keep putting your whole life on hold for this guy?”

“You don’t have to stay for this if you don’t want to.”

Sam opens his mouth, eyes flashing with anger, but then he shakes his head and sighs. “Steve, what do I look like? I’m not going anywhere till we figure out what’s gonna happen next,” he says. “Besides, you’re gonna need me if old Jekyll in there decides to go Hyde on your ass again.”

“He won’t,” says Steve firmly. He’s not sure he believes it himself. “It’s going to be different this time. He’ll be under control, he won’t be able to catch us off guard.”

Sam just shakes his head and smiles ruefully at Steve, then turns back to look out the window. Steve paces the length of the room and times his steps with the rhythm of his breathing until at long last an orderly appears at the door. “He’s ready,” she says. “You can come in and see him.”

Sam doesn’t turn around. “I think I’ll sit this one out,” he says, and so Steve makes his way down the hallway alone.

Bucky is propped up in bed on a mound of white pillows, hooked up to a saline drip, a discarded thermal blanket draped across his lap. His face is waxy and bloodless, but his eyes are alert and they snap to Steve’s face when he enters the room. “You’re here early,” he says in a rusty voice. “Feels like I’ve been asleep about five minutes.”

Steve takes a seat on a stool by the bed. “Does it feel any different when you’ve been under for longer?”

“Not really,” Bucky admits. He makes a strange, abortive little movement, and the stump of his metal arm twitches; his eyes squeeze shut for a painful moment, then he lifts his right arm carefully to scratch the injection site with his chin. “Still sucks about as bad. The care here’s better, though. Hydra used to just prop me upright and leave me to it.”

Steve’s mind rejects this particular train of thought. “Buck,” he says. “I don’t want to rush you if you’re still waking up, but I have some news you probably want to hear.”

Bucky starts to smile. “I kind of figured you might,” he says, and he’s pulling his mouth tight, cheeks twitching - trying to keep his smile in check. “You found a way to get Hydra’s shit out of my head. God, I never thought…”

“You never thought we were going to do it?” Steve says, a little more sharply than he means to.

Bucky chews his lip. “I just never thought it would be so soon,” he says, his gaze shifting away from Steve’s. “It’s only been four months. I thought I’d be under for a couple of years at least.”

Steve lets out a breath. Bucky’s a bad liar, but that’s not what matters now; they’ll have plenty of time, later on, to tackle the trust issue. “It’s gonna be hard,” he warns. “And when the doctors tell you what their plan is, I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“If it hurts, it hurts,” says Bucky. His smile is starting to creep back up his face. He looks completely unconcerned by the prospect of undergoing a painful experimental therapy, just business as usual; Steve feels a sharp pang in his chest, and impulsively he reaches out to rest a hand on Bucky’s arm.

One of the doctors bustles back in. “I need to check your vitals, Mr Barnes,” she says, and Steve understands that visiting hours are over for now.

-

About an hour later, a stressed-looking orderly comes into the room where Steve and Sam are waiting. “Your friend will not consent to treatment,” he says. “He is demanding to be returned to cryostasis.”

“Well, that didn’t take long,” says Sam.

-

Dinner is strained. T’Challa has put on a mouthwatering spread to welcome his guests, and he and Sam settle quickly into a routine of polite small talk over plates of stew and roast vegetables and fragrant legs of lamb and goat. Steve makes a few abortive efforts to join in, but his heart isn’t in it; he smiles apologetically under T’Challa’s querying gaze, and tries to discipline himself not to pick at his food. At the far end of the table, Bucky is avoiding all eye contact and shovelling food into his mouth with a ferocious determination.

The doctors have refused to put Bucky back in cryo so soon after thawing him. They say the strain on his body is too much, and he needs a couple of days back in the world to feed himself up and stabilise his core temperature. The delay is an unexpected blessing: enough time, Steve thinks, for Bucky to get over his knee-jerk reaction to Dr Mboye’s plan. At least if he says no this time, it’ll be because he’s thought it through. But Bucky isn’t happy.

There have been some debates among the staff about the advisability of agreeing to Bucky’s request now that alternative treatments are available; they keep throwing around words like ‘informed consent’ and ‘psychological evaluation’ which make Steve wince and Bucky’s face drain of blood.

“I don’t need a fucking shrink,” said Bucky, shortly before he decided that he and Steve were no longer on speaking terms. “Maybe you need a shrink, if you think this is a good idea. Turn me back into the Winter Soldier. Right. Because that’s definitely not going to end in fucking catastrophe.”

“Look, Buck,” said Steve, “I can’t force you to do this if you don’t want –”

“You can, though,” said Bucky. “Anyone can. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?”

Steve thought he was doing the right thing when he told T’Challa’s people to wake Bucky up. At least, that’s what he told himself. He may have had his reservations about the treatment itself, but the idea of seeing Bucky awake again – of talking it through with him, hashing out their options – was too tempting to pass up. It would be a waste, he’d figured, to come all the way to Wakanda and then leave without seeing Bucky face to face.

He’d never seriously considered the possibility that Bucky wouldn’t want to see him, too.

Maybe he should have thought it through a little longer – but despite Bucky’s anger, despite Sam’s reservations, Steve can’t bring himself to let it go. He doesn’t know what kind of inner state Bucky was in when he made the decision to go back into cryo; he was never debriefed, never assessed. He’d barely caught his breath from their fight with Tony. His broken metal arm was still literally spitting sparks when he moved his shoulder. And Steve has no way of knowing whether the doubts he’s having now are genuine – whether he’s really trying to do what’s best for Bucky, or whether he’s projecting his own hangups onto Bucky because he doesn’t like the decision Bucky made. Because he’s realised, now, how much he misses him.

Not all that long ago, Steve wouldn’t have had to wonder. He’d have known to trust his gut feeling. But after everything that’s happened, suddenly his gut feeling seems painfully untrustworthy.

Surely, if anyone has a right to be horrified by the thought of cryostatic suspension, it’s Bucky. And if Bucky’s fine with it, then Steve should be too.

But it’s been so long since Bucky has been able to choose between freedom and containment. Bucky’s tough, he’s always been tough; maybe he’s gotten so tough now that Steve didn’t notice Bucky needed help getting back on his feet.

“We’re going to have to talk about this eventually,” Steve says, once Bucky has finally emerged from his meal and the plates have been cleared away. “You can’t just ignore me forever.”

“I can do what I want,” says Bucky flatly, and stalks out of the dining room.

-

Steve spends most of the next day talking to Dr Mboye and her team, trying to get his head around the plan they’ve devised. She gives him a translated copy of Hydra’s book, and he spends an uncomfortable hour reading through General Karpov’s meticulous catalogue of gory film footage used as part of Hydra’s campaign to desensitise the Winter Soldier to violence.  _ The Soldier’s understanding of necessary sacrifice is advanced _ , the entry notes approvingly of Bucky’s reaction to an extended viewing session of civilians getting decapitated.  _ When asked about the footage he showed no distaste, reporting only, “It was necessary for the good of Hydra.” _

Steve feels dazed and a little nauseous when he steps out for a breather, and maybe that’s why his reactions aren’t as sharp as they should be. Outside in the courtyard, backed up against a large pool flowing in from the distant waterfalls, Sam is struggling with Bucky; he’s caught in a vicious headlock, face crumpling with effort as he flails his arms ineffectually. Steve’s heart plummets to his stomach and he’s bounding forward before he pauses to think. 

“Hey! Stop!” 

The sound of his voice makes Bucky startle. He drops Sam immediately and steps back, his hand up high in the air, his face an empty mask.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Sam. He doesn’t sound very choked; he steps towards Steve, reaching out in a pacifying gesture. “It’s cool, Steve, we’re cool here. Bucky was just showing me a chokehold I haven’t seen before.” He casts Bucky a black look over his shoulder. “I’m training up in case this guy’s stupid enough to try killing me again.”

“You’re…” Steve’s mind is a buzzing blank, adrenaline still thundering through his veins. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry. I thought…”

“Yeah, fair call,” says Sam. “But we’re good here.”

“Right,” says Steve. He blinks, sucks in a calming breath. “Sorry, Buck, I shouldn’t have…”

Bucky’s expression hasn’t shifted. His eyes have gone dull, hollow; it’s like watching the lights go out. “I didn’t know you were there till you shouted,” he tells Steve flatly. “You gave up your only advantage.” He lowers his arm, and gives Steve a cautious berth as he moves back inside. “Next time you shouldn’t try to warn me.”

He shuts the door behind him. Steve looks at Sam, guilty heat rising in his cheeks.

Sam shakes his head and claps Steve on the back. “How you doing in there?” he asks, brushing easily past the silence that hangs in Bucky’s wake. “Learn any more fun facts about Bucky Barnes the Communist Visionary?”

Steve shakes his head, shaking off the momentary paralysis like water. “They pumped him full of drugs and made him watch all these messed-up films,” he says. “People getting hurt, getting killed.”

“And I guess the doc’s gonna combat that by making him watch Care Bears or something,” says Sam, grimacing. “Good plan. That’s definitely going to do the trick.”

“I think her method is a little more complex than that.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well. Maybe.” He glances at the compound door to make sure Bucky’s out of view, then gingerly massages his throat. “I’m not gonna argue anymore because I know you don’t want to hear it. Just remember, Steve, this isn’t your call to make.”

The words hit close to home. Steve sighs, and sinks down onto a rock beside the pond. “Were we wrong to wake him up, Sam?”

“Maybe,” says Sam. “Maybe not.” He crouches down by Steve’s side and picks up a smooth pebble, flicking it up in the air with his thumbnail and catching it neatly in his palm. “He’s laying on the asshole routine pretty thick, but I found him out here skimming rocks across the pool like he was having the time of his life. I think he’s happy to see the sun for a while.”

It’s a weak sun today, smothered by dense clouds and jungle mist. “It’s nice you two are bonding,” says Steve.

Sam snorts. “Steve, that right there is your problem in a nutshell. You walk in on two trained killers trying to choke each other out and you think it’s nice that they’re bonding.”

“I should talk to him,” Steve says. “It’s just...it’s hard. He’s so different now, Sam. I don’t really know what to say anymore.”

“Just say what you’re thinking,” says Sam. “Unless you’re thinking his Hydra trigger code, in which case please do not say what you’re thinking. At least leave that one to the doctors.”

“He has to face it sooner or later,” says Steve. “T’Challa’s right. He can’t spend the rest of his life hiding in cryo because he can’t face what Hydra did to him. He’s stronger than that.”

Sam drops his rock into the pool. It sinks with a melodic plop, and the ripples fan out across the water, lapping at Steve’s feet where they dangle by the edge.

-

Steve sleeps fitfully. Karpov’s records are still spinning around his mind, and his dreams are littered with scenes of gore and misery. He scares himself awake around midnight with a school full of murdered children, and again at two with the image of Dr Mboye being torn limb from limb by a band of Soviet commandos. Just after four he wakes to the imagined echo of his own hoarse screams as Bucky saws him in half with a hunting knife, and decides he’s done sleeping for the night.

He gets up and splashes his face with cold water from the tap, but his room is dark and claustrophobic. He throws on a clean shirt and slips out into the empty hallway. The tiled floor is cool on his bare feet, and he pads his way silently through the compound.

He has a feeling that he won’t be the only one awake tonight. When he makes his way out to the back courtyard, he can see Bucky’s silhouette by the pool: sitting on the grass, shoulders slumped, his one arm wrapped loosely around his knees.

“Can’t sleep?” asks Steve. A thick dew has settled on the grass, seeping between his toes.

“Not tired,” says Bucky without bothering to turn around.

Steve slinks over and settles down on his rock beside the water. Silence has never been Steve’s strong suit, but Bucky doesn’t seem to feel the need to talk. He rolls a pebble loosely between his thumb and forefinger. The sound of his breathing is drowned out by the croaking hum of the jungle around them, the steady thunder of the nearby waterfalls.

There’s never going to be a better time. Steve’s still shaken and sticky with sweat from his dreams, but when he speaks, he finds his voice is steady.

“I know you’re angry with me,” he says. “Maybe you’ve got a right to be. When I told the doctors to wake you up, I guess I was mostly thinking of myself. Letting you go back in cryo...I know it’s what you wanted, and I don’t want to disrespect that. But to me it felt like giving up. Ever since then I’ve been turning it over in my head, trying to figure out if there was something else I should have done.”

Bucky is quiet for so long that Steve starts to think he won’t answer. “I’d forgotten how fucking impossible you are,” he says at last. “You can’t bear to let someone else make things easy on you.”

“Is that why you went under?” Steve asks. “Because you thought it would be easier on me?” It’s that thought, more than anything, that has been eating away at Steve. He’s never thought of himself as a coward, never thought he would sit back and let someone sacrifice themselves for him. But at the time, after everything that had happened, the thought of dealing with one more of Bucky’s murderous episodes...

“It  _ was  _ easier on you,” says Bucky. Then he shrugs, a strange lopsided gesture without his other arm there to balance it. “It wasn’t just about you, if that makes you feel any better. It was the best of a whole bunch of shitty alternatives.”

“But there’s another alternative now,” says Steve.

Bucky tosses his pebble. It skids across the surface of the water, leaving a trail of ripples that shimmer in the foggy moonlight. “Yeah,” he says, “and it’s still a shitty one. I’m done being the Winter Soldier, Steve. That’s why I went under. I’m done letting them control me.”

It’s a brave statement, confident, defiant. But Steve doesn’t miss the faint quaver in Bucky’s voice. “They are controlling you, though,” he says. Bucky whips around to glare at him. “Okay, just hear me out. If you go under because it’s what you want to do, that’s you making your own choice. And I won’t argue with it, even if I don’t agree.” Bucky turns his head away again. In the dim light, Steve thinks he sees him roll his eyes. “But if you go under because you’re scared of what they’ll do to you if you stay awake...that’s not a choice.” And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what’s been niggling at Steve for the last four months. The reason why he can’t seem to settle down and accept that Bucky wants to tap out.

“I’m not scared of what they’ll do to me,” says Bucky through clenched teeth. “I’m scared of what I’ll do to you. To your friends. To everyone in this fucking building, if I get half a chance.”

He’s not the only one who’s scared of that. In Hydra’s files, in Karpov’s notebook, the Winter Soldier’s programming has an unreal quality to it: a mad science experiment, all straight out of the pages of a wacky Cold War thriller novel. But Steve has looked the Winter Soldier straight in the eye, seen his single-minded destructiveness, his scorn and hatred for the world around him. “You really think I’d let that happen?” Steve says. “I talked to Dr Mboye today. Trust me, she knows the risks involved in triggering you. Her team are already working on a security plan to make sure that if something goes wrong, you won’t be able to cause any damage.”

Bucky is quiet for so long that the chirping insects in the background become a loud, cacophonous symphony in Steve’s ears. This time Bucky isn’t going to break the silence. He’s retreating back into his shell, and Steve can’t let him go until they’ve finished the conversation. He can’t.

“I’m scared too,” he says. “You’ve got plenty of reasons to be scared, I understand that. But if you decide to go back under, knowing full well that there’s another way out, then I need to know you’re doing it because you believe it’s what’s best for you. For you. Not for me, or for my friends, or for anyone else.”

More silence. Steve pulls up blades of grass and breathes the muggy air and waits.

“I can’t give you that,” says Bucky.

Steve closes his eyes briefly. “Then I can’t let you go.”

“God _ damn _ it, Steve.” Bucky slams down his fist; it thuds wetly into the soft ground. “Why are you doing this? After everything that’s happened?”

There are so many answers Steve could give. Because Bucky is all that’s left of Steve’s past. Because if he can be saved, then he should be saved. Because otherwise the guilt is too much to live with. Because Steve misses fighting with him side by side. Because Steve misses having him around.

“Because you’re my friend,” he said.

The muscles in Bucky’s arm flex, and for a wild moment Steve thinks Bucky is about to swing around and hit him. But then the fight seems to drain out of Bucky, and he slumps lower on the grass and runs his hand over his eyes.

“I thought about putting a bullet in my brain,” says Bucky. His shoulders are hunched inwards, his eyes fixed on the pool in front of him. His hand moves to rub unconsciously at the stump of his metal arm. “When I first got out, after the helicarriers. It was...things were pretty rough.” He shrugs, and digs his thumb into the joint of his shoulder. “I thought it would be better for everyone. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.”

“What stopped you?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky shrugs again. “Not some great revelation, if that’s what you asking. I just couldn’t do it, you know? I’ve spent my whole life up till now surviving. Guess I couldn’t figure out how to break the habit.”

A dry lump rises in Steve’s throat. He swallows heavily around it. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he says.

But the dam has burst. Bucky’s voice is still calm and steady - but he keeps on talking, fast, like he’s struggling to hold the words back. “I thought I could just stay hidden, stay out of trouble. Take some time to figure shit out. Everything was going fine, too. I wasn’t hurting anyone. Had no orders to follow. An apartment of my own. It was nice.”

Steve thinks back to the shithole where he found Bucky hiding out in Romania. It must have seemed nice compared to a fortified Hydra bunker in the forgotten Siberian wastelands.

At last Bucky turns back around. The moonlight casts harsh shadows across his face, and the bags beneath his eyes are dark like bruises; his hair is limp and stringy, and he looks so exhausted that Steve’s bones ache with sympathy. “You don’t get it, Steve. You can’t. You think the Winter Soldier is just some other guy who lives in my head with me. I wanted to pretend it could work that way – that they could just take out the trigger words and that would be the end of it. But that’s not how it works.” Bucky’s eyes are unfocused, staring listlessly into the middle distance. “The Winter Soldier  _ is  _ me. Maybe he’s more me now than the guy you knew in Brooklyn. And when I’m like that, it’s like...it’s like having tunnel vision. All I care about is my next target, all I feel is anger. And if I go back to that, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know what’ll be left when I snap back out of it, so yeah, damn fucking right I’m scared. How many people did I kill last time?”

“It won’t be like that,” says Steve.

“It’s always like that.”

“Not this time.” Carefully, wary of breaking the moment, Steve shifts down off his rock and sinks onto the damp grass by Bucky’s side. “We’ll take whatever precautions we need to. If you want to do this locked inside a vibranium cage, T’Challa can make it happen. We won’t let you hurt anyone.”

Bucky’s jaw works, clenching and unclenching. His eyes look bright and wet. “Why even bother? The whole world wants me gone, and they got plenty of good reason for that. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

“There’s other ways to make up for the past, Buck. You were the only person who knew about the five in Siberia.”

Bucky shakes his head. “They’re dead.”

“And you’re telling me they’re the only secret weapons Hydra ever had?”

“You can’t make up for seventy years of cold-blooded slaughter. I can’t  _ do  _ it, Steve.”

“You can.  _ We  _ can.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. His hand balls into a fist. 

Steve reaches out and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky stiffens, but doesn’t pull away. “No one’s going to force you to do this,” says Steve. “If all you want is to go back in cryo, we’ll put you back in cryo. You can stay there for the rest of your life if that’s what you want.” He takes a deep breath. “But if that’s what you decide to do, at least stop telling yourself it’s better for me. Because if you won’t be selfish, I will be. You’re my oldest friend, Buck. I keep losing you, over and over again, and I’m sick of it. I want to see you live. I want to see you get better. And I don’t believe you can make the world a better place by shutting yourself in a freezer.”

Bucky’s body is starting to tremble. “Just shut the fuck up a minute,” he says, voice cracking, and Steve rubs slow, soothing circles on his shoulder and listens to the shaky rasp of Bucky’s breath.

It takes Bucky several long minutes to get himself back under control. When he speaks again, his voice is barely more than a whisper.  “I want to get better.”

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “You will,” he says. He inches closer, heart aching, and Bucky doesn’t pull away; so Steve slings his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and lets his hand rest on the battered metal. “It’s gonna be hard, but I’ll be right there the whole time. We’ll get through it.”

Bucky relaxes against Steve, and they sit together quietly for a while. Little strains of birdsong start to join the hum of the insects; the moon disappears behind the high wall of the courtyard. Faint fingers of rising light turn the night sky grey.  
Steve closes his eyes, and listens to Bucky’s shallow breathing even out.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments welcome, here or on [tumblr](http://itsbuckybitch.tumblr.com).


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